In the treatment of the common tradition in J and E, respectively, local or national interests appear, from which it is generally inferred that E was written in the Northern Kingdom (Israel) and J in the Southern (Judah). The question of the age of these writings can be more profitably considered at a later stage of our inquiry.
The patriarchal history which begins with the migration of Abraham, Gen. 12, is preceded by what may be called the primeval history of mankind, Gen. 1-11. In these chapters E is not represented, and it seems probable that the Israelite historian began his book with Abraham. The primeval history as we read it, therefore, is derived in part from J, in part from P. From J come Gen. ii. 4b-iv. 25; vi. 1-8; a part of the composite story of the Flood (vii. 1-5, 7-10, 12, 17b, 22-23; viii. 6-12, 13b, 20-22); the sons of Noah, ix. 18-27, and part of the table of nations (x. 8-19, 21, 24-30); the Tower of Babel (xi. 1-9). These pieces do not form a literary unity, and they give evidence, as we should expect, of diverse origin. There are some among them which imply a continuous development of civilization, unbroken by the catastrophe of the Deluge, and Noah himself was originally an agricultural figure, the first vine-dresser and maker of wine, not the navigator of the ark. The tradition which ascribes the invention of the arts of primitive civilization to descendants of Cain (Gen. iv. 17-24) is obviously of different origin from the story of Cain and Abel. Closer inspection shows that the narrative of J in Gen. 1-11 is composed of two strands, each having a consistency and continuity of its own, and similar phenomena appear in subsequent parts of the history from Genesis to Samuel.
If these various elements are alike designated by the symbol J, it is because they exhibit the peculiarities of conception and expression which characterize that work. The God who walks for pleasure in his garden in the cool of the day, misses his gardeners, and finding that they have eaten the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge, drives them out of the garden for fear they might also put out their hands to the tree whose fruit gives immortality, or who comes down to see the tower the Babylonian heaven-stormers are building, and apprehending more presumptuous attempts from their success, breaks up their concert by the ingenious device of making them talk different languages, is plainly imagined in quite the same way as the God who visits Abraham on his way to Sodom or wrestles with Jacob or tries to kill Moses on the road to Egypt. Even more primitive is the fragment, Gen. vi. 1-4, telling how deities, captivated by the charms of mortal women, begot with them a mythical race of giants.